Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 10:30 am on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 10:30, 15 July 2020

Well, Llywydd, business rate relief is practically universal in these sectors at 100 per cent for the rest of this financial year, so there's nothing further we can do there, because they're not paying any business rates at all.

In terms of local spend and procurement, then the outstanding area in which we have been able to achieve new ground in this context is in personal protective equipment, where many Welsh businesses have answered the call that we made to help us to secure the necessary supplies of PPE for our health and social care sector—250 million items now issued, Llywydd, a million items being issued every day, 91 million items to social care alone. We wouldn't have been able to do that if we hadn't used our procurement in order to encourage Welsh businesses to convert what they were previously doing into the production of face masks, fluid-resistant gowns and other things that are now being supplied not just to Wales, but to other parts of the United Kingdom as well. I think that is a very good example of how, in a crisis, people can act really quickly, incredibly positively. We've been so grateful for what businesses in Wales have done in this area, and we want to do more of that, of course.

In terms of local spend, then the fact that our 'stay local' message in Wales wasn't lifted until just about a week or so ago means that people have indeed been spending locally in Wales during this pandemic, because that's where their lives have been led. I know that that, by itself, has managed to sustain a number of businesses who, without that local support, would not have been able to survive. I agree with what Paul Davies said: many businesses are indeed in survival mode at the moment. And our aim is to help them to survive so that when the better days come, they will be there to continue their previous success. But that survival has only been possible, in many contexts, because people have stayed local, because they have spent local and they've supported those local businesses.